Arley Lagrelle was stabbed in a fight that followed a high-speed chase in which the vehicle he was riding in was repeatedly rammed, his sister testified in court on Wednesday.
Jasyntha Littlejohn, 29, said she was driving her Dodge Durango with her brother, her partner and a friend as passengers when a pickup truck pulled out of the Sunchild School turnoff and began following her on the evening of Nov. 9, 2018.
Littlejohn testified that one of the passengers inside the pursuing vehicle was Evan Ernest Foureyes, whose second-degree murder jury trial is underway in Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench. Foureyes is also charged with assault with a weapon and kidnapping with a firearm.
When she sped up the pickup picked up speed and stayed close on her tail. She briefly turned into a friend’s property and stopped before continuing, with the pickup still following.
She hit speeds of 130 km/h trying to escape as the pickup rammed her eight to 10 times.
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After getting to the Sunchild Store around 9 p.m., her brother told her to stop, saying “Let’s deal with this.”
Lagrelle, 23, and the others got out of the Dodge Durango and Evan Foureyes confronted Lagrelle.
The two threw punches at each other for about two minutes and then Lagrelle called out “Sis, he stabbed me.”
Lagrelle made his way to the front of the store but found the door locked. Lagrelle was clutching his chest, bleeding heavily and Littlejohn took off her sweater to press against his wound.
Littlejohn testified she saw a knife in Foureyes’ hand. He demanded her vehicle keys and when she refused he attacked. She went to the ground and kicked at him with her feet. She was seven-months pregnant and was trying to protect her unborn child, she said.
Soon, Lagrelle stopped talking and he could offer no help when his sister and two others put him in the back seat of Littlejohn’s SUV. She told a Sunchild Store employee to call police and she raced to Rocky Mountain House hospital.
An autopsy showed Lagrelle died from a single stab wound to the heart.
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Crown prosecutor Bruce Ritter asked her how she has been affected by the death of her brother.
“It affected me a lot. My life is different now,” she said.
“Losing my brother hurt me, man. He was best friend. I’d do anything for him.”
In his opening statement to the jury, Ritter told the jury that the day after Lagrelle’s murder, Foureyes approached a truck driver about to head off to work and demanded at rifle-point that he give him a ride to Rocky Mountain House. He took him as far as the O’Chiese truck stop.
Foureyes was arrested at an O’Chiese home later that day after a standoff with RCMP.
The trial that began Tuesday before Justice Nick Devlin is expected to last nearly three weeks.